Introducing a thread on political philosophy and then going all ACist on us is a bait and switch of epic proportions.

There's already a thread with plenty of laughter about this.

https://twitter.com/mollycrabapple/s...67164972593153

I think there's a similarity to anarcho-capitalists and communists on the one hand and people looking for the grand unification theory on the other. People would love to be so clever that they can set up a couple axioms and have everything perfectly fall into place after that. Society solved. What's next?

There were ~10M Native Americans, so some of the land was theirs, but not all. I don't think the forced re-location in later history was just. I don't see anything unreasonable about building a railroad. It's unjust for the government to just "claim it all" and therefore we can lobby to build a railroad.

The rest is a microbet fairy-tale view of government akin to Jack & the Bean Stalk. The magical bean stock just grows out of nowhere, and it's all thanks to the government salesman who pitches the magic beans. No explanation is needed! The bean stalk is there, and the castle is in the sky!

Right. Humans are designed to look for this kind of solution to problems. But we can see from the competitive theory that libertarians themselves state that a non-governmental society is not competitive in real life. If it were, there would be large non-governmental societies competing side-by-side successfully with governmental societies.

Lol, I wanted to get into Hobbes at some point, and wil's point. You can characterize anything as you wish. I reject mixed economy. So be it. Democrats and Republicans throw poo 24/7 otf, but when libertarians through poo it's an AC hijack. Lol.

People believe in government. That's why it exists. So it survives the survival of the fittest contest by duping the masses that it is necessary/needed/hasalwaysbeen, etc.

Also, there are gold/silver prices in the meantime. One doesn't have to compete with the land monopolies so much as just buy gold, and watch it all go to dust as the microbet philosopher's kings fail to predict the future time,and time again like a Conan O'brien In The Year 2000 sketch.

No currency has survived the survival of the fittest test long-term, yet they still exist.

Gold is highly competitive to the status quo. DUCY?

Justice for Native and Indigenous people has barely begun, is far from complete, and injustice under the guise of law and order continues to repeat itself. Long struggle.

Both new world continents were civilized and full of governments.

I've definitely hit a nerve. I've as sweetly dispassionate as can be, but I have limits and they're not even particularly broad. If this is going along the lines of "microbet fairy-tale" I'll go yell at Republicans or something.

I don't know why not actually making a point is the same as striking a nerve. You're not really any different from the Republicans in that respect. You could describe your fantastic unification theory, or your reasoning why because churches exist, it's evidence that God's the natural order, etc. I don't see how the philosopher king's get it right, etc. etc. I think you're content to live in democracy fantasy world, which you know, I'd bet against democracy in the long run.

Doesn't bother me.

"Free" marketeers have to account for the totalitarian constructs represented by totalitarian entities which operate in markets. Call Ayn Rand for back up?

Thus the trusim "there is no such thing as a free market."

I can't imagine you can't see how you're being difficult. I suppose this is all about this sentence?

"The best evidence of what is necessary is what actually happened."

That's quite an extrapolation and wildly vague tangent you've gone on. I know there are other thoughts going on in your head which may connect these things, but I'm not privy to them.

Back to the point (I think. It's hard to tell with your flights of fancy):

That a huge swath of major technological and social improvements were done directly by or with the aid of government is better evidence for government being necessary for such things than the pure speculation that they would have happened without government is evidence of it's lack of necessity.


I thought this was more interesting before you started being an *******.

Yeah, it occurred to me while I was out that you might have flipped out about that sentence. There's no prescription there. I was not suggesting that government must invest in art, though it does and it is a contribution. We spoke of advancements and I didn't think it was fair to make the assumption that advancement only meant commercial technology.

Mathematics is art though and while Pythagoras may or may not have been supported by "government" at the time, most of the few thousand PhDs and tens of thousands of lower degrees which are heavily subsidized by the government and go on many years in the future to heavily subsidize industry are something which helps make advances in commercial technology possible.

A government can clearly be used for art.

For sure. Also, art is more than just paintings and music. As it occurred to me that this might have been what inflamed LoL, I was looking at a street and how there were trees I didn't have to pay a dollar and a half just to see 'em.

Anarcho-capitalist, it's true, yes, people wouldn't pay a dollar and half just to look at them. So, yes, in your utopia people would keep their tree money and live without the trees. That's totally besides the point that they'd also be living without the railroad, the internet or their cell phones.

So I simply point out that you are wrong, and it's "flipping out". You can just admeit you are wrong instead of resorting to ad hominem. That way you can spare yourself from being wrong again.

Wrong about what?

Are you correcting "flipped out" to "flipping out" because you contend that it's true in the present tense, but not the past? That's only half right.

I know the population here makes big distinctions between ad hominem, attacking the post and not the poster, and dances around such things with sarcasm like "microbet's fairy tale", but that's all bull****. Either you're being an ******* or you're not.

(snipped)

One point at a time. Can you back-up to what I perceieved as your wild extrapolation on how libertarians have a unification theory w the communists? Also shifting the discussion to me is not helpful. I'll try to focus, lol.



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I was wrong about what flipped you out? Is that it?

Ok, I'm sorry that I speculated about what might have flipped you out (or "flipping you out" if you prefer) and it was something else that flipping you out.

That wasn't my point at all. It's not that the anarcho-capitalist and communists have worked together on a theory. It's that anarcho-capitalists are like communists in that like those searching for a grand unification theory in physics they believe that from a small set of axioms or rules they can derive the proper solution every large complex problem.

For physicists though, it's a noble pursuit. There's no automatic assumption that it's true. For political/social/economic absolutists there's just a proclamation that their rules are the best regardless of outcomes.

Sigh, okay I'll try to argue on all three fronts as it were! Microbet's fairytale is where the thoughtful leaders wind up in government because investors don't plan 20 years ahead



And Ben Bernanke is a philosopher king (think Plato), and everything is groovy.

And flipped out, flipping out, lol. I don't think you read emotions well on the interwebs. Someone logically refutes you ergo they are flipping/flipped out. Yawn. Some poets have been sponsered by gov't ergo we need gov't. Music industry, meh, leaves is flipping out. Lolol.

Anyway microbet, your main point is based on a fallacy

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post...go_propter_hoc

I am mostly concerned w convincing people who are smart enough to see that. Government provided magic beans, ergo wo gov't there would be no internet, ergo you struck a nerve and get victorypoints, ergo I yawn.

You're not correctly describing anything I said. It's not automatically true that government investment was necessary for the internet. It did happen that way. That shows that it's possible. Some wonder would the internet have been created without government. That seems like the claim that needs support. I understand there's no test bed for a world without governments, but there's history. There's growing government investments in education and research which have clearly led to technological improvements.

You are talking about fairy tales? The world where this happens without government investment is the fairy tale. It may be possible, but it takes a pretty big leap of faith to believe in it. You have no logical fallacy because you have no logic or argument. You just propose that it would have happened anyway and I suppose you propose that it would have happened sooner and better.